Seminar Looks At Media Agencies In The Digital Age
One of the main talking points during today’s MediaTel Group seminar on the ‘Future Of The Media Agency’ was how digital fits into the agency format, with panellist Andrew Walmsley, co-founder of i-level, keen to point out that despite what some people might say, digital is not just another medium.
He said: “The biggest distinction between digital and traditional media is that digital is two things; it is both a marketing channel and a channel to market, and those two things require different approaches and different skills.”
Seminar chair Torin Douglas asked Walmsley where i-level fits with, for example, broadcasters and newspapers moving more into the digital space and being able to offer things to advertisers which cut across media, to which Walmsley replied that this is a relatively small part of the market, adding: “If you look at the online advertising market, the display side of it online is overwhelmingly dominated by pure play digital players.
“Now, that’s not to say that traditional advertisers with digital arms aren’t doing very successful business online – the Sun is a case in point, and also the Guardian launching Guardian America – but the reality is that whilst they will grow – and we want to ensure that we are helping the clients where possible to do this and work across multiple media – but actually they are struggling to make that work because they don’t know who to talk to.”
Nick Manning, chief operating officer, Thomson-Intermedia, said: “I don’t think the agencies yet have really gotten to grips with the whole digital revolution. There has been a lot of talk – I’ve been guilty of it myself – about putting digital at the heart of the agency, but I don’t think there has actually been enough change in the business to embrace the full meaning of digital.
“I’m not just talking about the communications channel here, I’m also talking about the transactional side. The biggest criticism that ever gets levelled by clients about media agencies is ‘they don’t know about my business’. They’re normally talking about the transactional side but quite often they’re talking about the online side generally and I’ve had so many clients who’ve come from the agency side who are now saying ‘the agency’s good but they’re behind where we are in terms of the digital space’, and if I hear that once again I shall scream.”
On perhaps a slightly more upbeat note, Greg Grimmer, managing director of Zed Media, said that, “the accountability of the sales channel nature of digital has made me feel – for the first time in 20 years of agency life – that I actually am a business partner to clients…These days you cannot ignore the fact that digital will change people’s businesses.”
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